TouchMarks tests show iPads most responsive tablet screens

The new TouchMarks benchmark has determined that Apple's iPad touchscreens are more responsive than their Android and Windows RT competitors.

The Apple iPad scored highly in the new TouchMarks benchmark.
(Credit: Apple)

TouchMarks is a stripped-down benchmark developed by Agawi, a developer of streaming technology that integrates advertising within mobile games. The TouchMarks benchmark flashes a bright light from the app as soon as it detects a touch input, delivering a result that Agawi calls the Minimum App Response Time (MART).

The test, which pitted the iPad mini and 4th generation iPad against the Nexus 7, Samsung's Galaxy Note 3 8.0, the Amazon Kindle Fire HD, the Nvidia SHIELD, and the original Microsoft Surface RT, showed that Apple's devices are far more optimised to reduce lag between a user touching the screen and that input being registered.

Agawi suggests the results may come down to the iPads polling for touch input more frequently, handling inputs at a higher priority than other system processes, or being more refined on a hardware level. Whatever the reason, the iPad remains the most responsive tablet tested, with the iPad mini besting the larger 4th generation iPad very slightly.

Of the non-Apple devices, Nvidia's SHIELD performed best, but also had the widest variance in response times, being slower in some cases than the Surface RT and Kindle Fire HD.

The tests were run a minimum of 50 times on each device to ensure the consistency of results.

Along with the results from Agawi's first round of tests that showed iPhone screens were more responsive than competitors, this seems to show Apple is placing screen response very high in the operating system pecking order compared to others. But the very existence of such quantified testing may encourage others to improve their work in this regard.

Future versions of the TouchMarks benchmark are coming soon, and include a look back at the touchscreens of previous iPhones as far back as the 3GS, as well as an investigation into the response time of games and streaming apps on tablets and smartphones.